


between the stacks

by absolutepeddlerofmuck



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Magic, chance encounters at bookstores, the rumors are true! he's fae, turns out that hozier is actually magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 08:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20112376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absolutepeddlerofmuck/pseuds/absolutepeddlerofmuck
Summary: You have been searching for a mysterious book for your entire life. After a chance encounter in the rare books section of a bookshop, you come to realize that not everything is as it seems.





	between the stacks

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This isn't my first fic, but it's my first Hozier fic. Please be gentle!

You don’t expect the skies to open up on your way to the bookstore, but they do. Thunder claps and the deluge begins, immediately soaking you from head to toe. Cursing, you duck under the awning of Caldwell’s Books: New and Used, and immediately set to work wringing out your hair. 

Inside, the shop is cool, full of the musty scent of yellowing paper and aging leatherbound covers. There is a bored teenage girl sitting at the counter, and she gives you a once-over before returning to reading her Twitter feed. You don’t even bother asking her for the book you’re looking for; first, you doubt that the shop has it at all, and second, it’s embarrassing. A book on magic? Really? You can imagine her eye roll, so you save yourself the trouble.

The floorboards creak beneath your feet as you cross the main floor, and you’re painfully aware of the amount of water dripping off of you as you go. Normally, you’re a lot more respectful of the spaces you’re in, but sometimes you just can’t help it. You give the display tables a wide berth, not wanting to wrinkle the covers and dampen the pages with your personal rain shower. 

“Do you have a rare books section?” you ask, turning around to look at the teenage girl. 

“Downstairs to your right.” She looks at you again, eyes appraising. “Don’t touch anything.” 

You nod, and head downstairs, the steps creaking just as much as the floorboards above it. The lighting is different down here; yellower, the ceilings lower, and bookshelves are stuffed full with used copies of everything from cookbooks to travel guides to books in foreign languages. Following the directions given, you head down the hall and to the right, to a smaller section, full of mahogany bookshelves. 

The air is immediately different in this section. You can feel it—the buzz isn’t just from the fluorescent lightbulbs. It feels like magic, like there’s something here that shouldn’t be. The leatherbound volumes draw you in. Reaching up, you trace your fingers over one spine; a Celtic knot is carved into the leather, protective. Your mother always said that it would leap out at you— “This sort of book calls out to the right person. It doesn’t want to go unnoticed.”

Maybe this would be the place. You’d been searching for years for this book, combed through countless shelves and baskets and attics and shops. Your mother had been interested in finding it too, and you looked together for it before she died. Rumors swirled around this book—it could cure diseases, bring good fortune, create riches. Depending on what you wanted, this book could do it. Many wrote it off as folly, as ridiculous fairytale, but people had claimed sightings. In recent years, as the world turned more and more to hatred and greed and strife, people sought it out even more. 

You aren’t sure if you’ll find it here. There is a tiny seed of doubt in the back of your mind about its very existence, but you keep looking. Sometimes it’s more for your mother than it is for your benefit. 

Drawing deeper into the rare books section, you breathe in the scent of old books. There’s a word for that, you think idly. Biblichor, you remember. Biblios-, Greek for books, and Ichor, “the fluid that flows like blood from Gods’ veins” from Greek mythology. It’s poetic. 

You are so distracted by the towers of books that you don’t notice the other person at first. When you do, he catches the corner of your eye, and you almost gasp aloud in surprise. He’s gigantic, first of all, so you missing him is a terrible oversight on your part. His head almost brushes the low ceiling, and he’s lucky that he’s bent toward a book in his finely shaped hands. 

He looks up; you’ve stared too long, and he felt it. A small smile flickers across his face, and you recognize him. 

Okay, no magic book yet. But there’s Hozier. 

You return his small smile and say nothing. You’re not in the business of disturbing people, especially in bookstores, and especially if they’re famous. There is no Hozier here; you suppose he’s just Andrew, or nobody at all, browsing through the rare books section, just as anyone else would. 

There’s a moment that passes between the two of you that you can’t really put a finger on. 

“Has it been raining?” he asks quietly, and you remember with an embarrassing jolt that you’re soaking wet. 

“Yes,” you reply, glancing down at your soaked through denim jacket and your damp shoes. They squish when you walk. “Sudden downpour caught me off guard.” 

“That’s the nature of sudden things, yeah,” he says, but not in a condescending way. Understanding, more like. Empathetic. You’re both talking no more above a whisper, like you’re in a sanctuary, a church. 

You have to resist the urge to stare, but you do look at him. The curls he’s famous for are hugged tightly inside a beanie, and he’s got glasses on, hiding green eyes. He looks like any other rumpled literature major, with slightly wrinkled flannel shirt and distressed jeans. A decidedly decent disguise, if only you hadn’t been too familiar, too good with faces. 

“Are you looking for something in particular?” He asks this like he’s an employee, not a rock star on a day off. “A first edition of something, perhaps?” 

Shaking your head, you move past him, further into the section. It’s mostly so that you don’t have to look at him for too long. “Definitely a first edition,” you reply, your fingers tracing the spines of the books again. “But it probably doesn’t exist. It’s a legend.” Why are you telling him this? Nothing more than a stranger, he should be in the same league as the bored teenage girl upstairs. 

You wait for the laugh of disbelief, the “Why are you searching for something that’s not real?” 

It never comes. Instead, you hear him close his own book. “Who doesn’t like a good mystery?” You can hear the smile in his voice. 

Both of you comb the shelves. He has the advantage of height, so you look at the shelves closer to your own eye level. You don’t know if the book has a title; that hadn’t been shared with you. You had to explain to Hozier—Andrew? Nobody?—that the book simply calls out to you. It embarrasses you a little, but he listens patiently and seems to understand. 

You can still feel the soft buzz of magic, or what you think is magic, in this section. It’s a little more pronounced now. Your mother described it almost like the feeling of when your foot goes numb; the sharp tingling that you have to shake out. The two of you move through the section, and the feeling gets stronger and clearer. 

Searching in mostly silence, you don’t realize how cold you are until you’re shivering. The shop has the air conditioning blasting, and your damp clothing is making your teeth chatter. It disturbs the quiet between you, until he says, “You’re freezing.” 

“I’m alright,” you reply. 

There is a moment that passes between you again. Silence, and then the feeling of magic—the tingling, the buzzing—almost covers your whole body. It must mean you’ve found the book. You look frantically around the shelves, searching, but you realize after a moment that it’s not the book. It’s you. No longer cold, your body is warm, and your clothes are dry. 

Stunned, you look up, and there’s Hozier-Andrew-Nobody, who looks both bashful and suddenly ethereal. The tingling feeling fades from you, but the buzz is still in the air. This time, you can tell very clearly that it’s centered around him. 

You think about the jokes, rumors on the internet. Fae. Witch. Immortal. King of the underworld. The last one, obviously, doesn’t seem to be true. But the others? 

“What if I told you that there isn’t a book?” he says, and he looks nervous. “What you’ve been searching for is actually me?” 

“You?” You don’t mean to sound shocked, because people have been unwilling to believe you for years, so why wouldn’t you believe him? “You’re—the book?” 

A grin crosses his face for a second, and you can see the magic behind it. “For lack of a better explanation, yes.” 

You almost let out a laugh, because you’re giddy, but also because you can’t believe this. “So all of the rumors saying that you’re fae—they’re true?” 

“Not exactly.” Nervously, he takes off his beanie, and the auburn curls spill forth. Running a hand through them, he looks at you for a long moment. “It’s easy to encourage rumors when they’re made for you. Easier to deflect from the real story that way.” 

Leaning against the stacks to support yourself because your knees have gone weak, you stare at him for a long moment. “And what is the real story, Hozier? Andrew? Whoever you are?” 

The grin returns, and you have to admit it’s beautiful. It belongs to someone that shouldn’t be in this realm, and even in the rare books section of a tiny bookshop, it’s stunning. “It would take a long time to tell, if you’re willing to stick around. I feel like since you’ve searched so long for this book, perhaps you’d like to hear it.” 

“Prove it.” 

“Your dry clothes aren’t enough?” he asks, amused. 

“I’m having a little trouble wrapping my mind around this,” you reply, a little defiantly. 

Raising an eyebrow (my god, he has nice eyebrows, you think), he glances at a volume on one of the upper shelves. Without moving a muscle, the book drifts daintily from the shelf and into his outstretched palm.  


“So?” he says, and you nod, replying, “Tell me the story.” 

You both sit on the bookshop floor, and he begins.


End file.
